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When Mattis tried to get Michele Flournoy, that was outrageous enough.

Michele Flournoy would have been Hillary Clinton's Secretary of Defense. She was an Obama/Hillary hack. Having her as Deputy Secretary of State in an administration trying to move on from those failed policies was wildly wrong. But Mattis nearly quit because Team Trump wouldn't let him have her.

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis wants to tap the former U.S. ambassador to Egypt, Anne Patterson, as his undersecretary of defense for policy, but the Pentagon chief is running into resistance from White House officials, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation.

If nominated and confirmed, Patterson would hold the fourth most powerful position at the Pentagon – and would effectively be the top civilian in the Defense Department, since both Mattis and his deputy, Robert Work, were military officers.

As ambassador to Egypt between 2011 and 2013, Patterson worked closely with former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and his Islamist government. She came under fire for cultivating too close a relationship with the regime and for discouraging protests against it—and White House officials are voicing concerns about those decisions now.

That's an understatement. Raymond Ibrahim and I wrote about Patterson regularly. And readers are likely to recognize the name.

Patterson has never held a DoD position. Moving her in to a top position would already be dubious. But she's an Islamist shill who had to be removed from Egypt after widespread public outrage. This is why.

Patterson demanded that Egypt’s recently appointed Supreme Commander of the Egyptian Armed Forces, General Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, release all Muslim Brotherhood members currently being held for questioning:..

The June 18 edition of Sadi al-Balad reports that lawyer Ramses Naggar, the Coptic Church’s legal counsel, said that during Patterson’s June 17 meeting with Pope Tawadros, she “asked him to urge the Copts not to participate” in the demonstrations against Morsi and the Brotherhood.

In testimony to Congress, US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Ambassador Anne W. Patterson, defended the Palestinian Authority practice of paying salaries to terrorists in prison saying "they have to provide for the families."

On Feb. 26, Mahmoud Shalan, a Palestinian with U.S. citizenship, attempted to stab Israeli soldiers to death at a security checkpoint near Ramallah. The soldiers shot in self-defense, wounding Shalan. Israel Defense Forces doctors and Magen David Adom emergency response personnel administered first aid to the terrorist, but he died of his wounds.

Nevertheless, Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Anne Patterson asserted this week that the Obama administration “continues to have concerns about the death of this American citizen.” She vowed that the administration “will remain engaged with the government of Israel on this issue.”

Mattis has shown very bad judgment twice in moving key Obama era figures into top positions. Like many successful generals, Mattis has cultivated a cult of personality. And we've seen what that amounts to with McChrystal and Petraeus.

The Trump administration is beset by hostile action from within. While some of his appointees, like Sessions, are targeted, others, like Mattis, have gotten a nearly free pass from the left. That says something.

We're not going to win with the same Obama gang at the wheel in the Pentagon.